Viola Ford Fletcher, a revered figure and one of the final living witnesses to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has passed away at the age of 111. Fletcher, who spent much of her life seeking justice for the brutal attack that devastated the vibrant Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, died in a Tulsa hospital, surrounded by her loved ones, as confirmed by her grandson, Ike Howard.
Throughout her long life, Viola Fletcher was guided by her unwavering faith. She played many roles: a devoted mother of three, a hardworking welder during the tumultuous World War II era, and a dedicated housekeeper, spending decades nurturing families with care and diligence.
The city of Tulsa mourns the loss of this remarkable woman. Mayor Monroe Nichols expressed the community’s grief, noting, “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose.” Fletcher’s life story and legacy have left an indelible mark on all who heard it.
Fletcher was just 7 years old when the horrors of the Tulsa Race Massacre unfolded. On May 31, 1921, chaos erupted in the Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, following a sensationalized newspaper report alleging a Black man had assaulted a white woman. A white mob formed, and as armed Black residents gathered to protect the accused from lynching, they were met with overwhelming violence. The result was catastrophic: hundreds lost their lives, and the thriving community was reduced to ashes and ruin, with over 30 blocks laid to waste.
Reflecting on those harrowing days, Fletcher eloquently captured her memories in her 2023 memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.” She wrote of the “charred remains of our once-thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air, and the terror-stricken faces of my neighbors,” ensuring that the tragedy and its impact would not be forgotten.
“I could never forget the charred remains of our once-thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air, and the terror-stricken faces of my neighbors,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.”
As her family left in a horse-drawn buggy, her eyes burned from the smoke and ash, she wrote. She described seeing piles of bodies in the streets and watching as a white man shot a Black man in the head, then fired toward her family.
She told The Associated Press in an interview the year her memoir was published that fear of reprisals influenced her years of near-silence about the massacre. She wrote the book with Howard, her grandson, who said he had to persuade her to tell her story.
“We don’t want history to repeat itself so we do need to educate people about what happened and try to get people to understand why you need to be made whole, why you need to be repaired,” Howard told the AP in 2024. “The generational wealth that was lost, the home, all the belongings, everything was lost in one night.”
The attack went largely unremembered for decades. In Oklahoma, wider discussions began when the state formed a commission in 1997 to investigate the violence.
Fletcher, who in 2021 testified before Congress about what she went through, joined her younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, and another massacre survivor, Lessie Benningfield Randle, in a lawsuit seeking reparations. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed it in June 2024, saying their grievances did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.
“For as long as we remain in this lifetime, we will continue to shine a light on one of the darkest days in American history,” Fletcher and Randle said in a statement at the time. Van Ellis had died a year earlier, at the age of 102.
A Justice Department review, launched under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act and released in January 2024, outlined the massacre’s scope and impact. It concluded that federal prosecution may have been possible a century ago, but there was no longer an avenue to bring a criminal case.
The city has been looking for ways to help descendants of the massacre’s victims without giving direct cash payments. Some of the last living survivors, including Fletcher, received donations from groups but have not received any payments from the city or state.
Fletcher, born in Oklahoma on May 10, 1914, spent most of her early years in Greenwood. It was an oasis for Black people during segregation, she wrote in her memoir. Her family had a nice home, she said, and the community had everything from doctors to grocery stores to restaurants and banks.
Forced to flee during the massacre, her family became nomadic, living out of a tent as they worked in the fields as sharecroppers. She didn’t finish school beyond the fourth grade.
At the age of 16, she returned to Tulsa, where she got a job cleaning and creating window displays in a department store, she wrote in her memoir. She then met Robert Fletcher, and they married and moved to California. During World War II, she worked in a Los Angeles shipyard as a welder, she wrote.
She eventually left her husband, who was physically abusive, and gave birth to their son, Robert Ford Fletcher, she wrote. Longing to be closer to her family, she returned to Oklahoma and settled north of Tulsa in Bartlesville.
Fletcher wrote that her faith and the close-knit Black community gave her the support she needed to raise her children. She had another son, James Edward Ford, and a daughter, Debra Stein Ford, from other relationships.
She worked for decades as a housekeeper, doing everything in those homes from cooking to cleaning to caring for children, Howard said. She worked until she was 85.
She eventually returned to Tulsa to live. Howard said his grandmother hoped the move would help in her fight for justice.
Howard said the reaction his grandmother got when she started speaking out was therapeutic for her.
“This whole process has been helpful,” Howard said.
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